games

Bristol Games Hub Newsletter

Bristol Games Hub is a non-profit space for games and play. We run this newsletter, host events and also rent desk space at a cost price with no strings attached so you can get on and create amazing games. Contact debbie at aurochdigital dot com for more information or with news items for the next newsletter and let us know if you have any news you would like sharing in the next one by 15th July please!

Next Games Hub Anti-Social: 27th August, 7.30pm

We’ll give you more info on what they will be closer to the time, but stick the date in your diaries! If you have a suggestion for a talk, drop us an email!

Games Hub News:

BGH Marketing Group Meetup
The Hub marketing group, an informal meet-up of people to talk about the means and ways to market games, is meeting on Wednesday 17th at 7.30pm. We’re talking Reddit & Facebook this time plus a general chat. If you want to come along, please email tom at aurochdigital dot com so we know you’re coming as numbers are limited! If you can’t make it, we’ve got an email discussion group too here.

Going to Develop: Brighton?
We’re putting together an informal dinner for developers, on the evening of the Tuesday 14th. If you are interesting in coming for some food, drop us an email to debbie at aurochdigital dot com. Spaces are limited, so we can’t promise anything!

SW Freelancer/Company Dev Directory
If you’re looking for people to help on a project, or you are available for work – put your details in. Please only list info you’re happy to have in the public domain:http://bit.ly/bghdirectory

Dev Scene News

Pocket Gamer Connects – San Francisco

After successes in London, Helsinki, and Bangalore, Pocket Gamer Connects is going stateside and bringing the premier mobile-focused B2B event to San Francisco on the 7th and 8th of July. More information is available at pgconnects.com, and you can keep up with the event on #PGCSanFran. If you’re headed out there, contact Bristol-based journalist Peter Willington, who will be in attendance.

Creative Gaming Award

PLAY15 festival introduces the new ‘Creative Gaming Award’ You can submit concepts, alpha and/or beta for any game that deals with the medium in a creative way. Categories are;
– Most Creative Game
– Most Innovative Newcomer
Deadline is 15th July and there is no cost to enter and winner gets €3000! Full info on this PDF.

Auroch Digital

First off, a huge thanks to all who have signal-boosted the news of Dark Future: Blood Red States. We had great coverage from PC Gamer, Kotaku, Game Debate, Rock Paper Shotgun, Pocket Tactics and many more! We’ve also announced the winner of our Chainsaw Warrior: Lords of the Night competition – to write the best 80s action movie style review! We’re also recruiting and have a jobs page on our site now, which can be found here and below.

Twice Circled

Twice Circled, “I released the Big Pharma beta earlier this month. It’s a game about running your own pharmaceutical company. I’ve been astounded by the response from Youtubers/streamers with some really high profile people covering it, including Northern Lion and Sips from The Yogscast. Despite a few graphical bugs and some performance problems, the general reception has been overwhelmingly positive and I couldn’t be happier. The full release on Steam is planned for later this year. For further information, head over to the official website.”

Jobs & Opportunities

Auroch Digital

We have now filled the Producer role (and welcome Kelly Venables to the team!) We’ve still got open vacancies for an experienced programmer and an office manger/book keeper! http://www.aurochdigital.com/jobs/

Creative Youth Network

Creativeyouthnetwork.org.uk do great work with young people and are looking for a paid mentor to help a talented upcoming game developer – anyone interested?

Events Diary

Games Hub Marketing Group (June 17th 7.30pm)

Join us at Bristol Games Hub for a peer learning session about how to tell fans about our games. We’ll be looking at social media and Reddit. Email tom at auroch digital dot com if you want to come along!

We all love our computers, but generally they are mostly something we keep indoors. In this week’s talk, the PM Studio are delighted to welcome digital artist and creative coder Seb Lee-Delisle to the Studio. Seb will be showing us that really amazing things can happen when we take our computers into the elements.http://www.watershed.co.uk/pmstudio/events/fri-19062015-100pm

Wales Games Developer Show (June 19th)

Unity Meetup – More Procedural Meshes! (June 22nd 7.30pm)

At Bristol Games Hub: The Unity meetup is back, on a Monday no less! This time around we have the second instalment on how to create 3D models from code ready for you. In this final part of his talk, Alexander will cover the following topics:

A short recap on creating procedural meshes to introduce newcomers to the topic and provider a refresher to everyone who attended last time

UV coordinates & Texturing. How to put pretty pictures on the surfaces of your meshes.

Bezier curves. Create smooth curves to define surfaces or paths

Delaunay Triangulation. Turn an arbitrary series of points into a surface with Triangle.Net

Board Game Night (1st July, 7.30pm)

Join us at Bristol Games Hub on 1st July to play amazing board games. Bring a title along and/or join in another game. All welcome – email tom at aurochdigital dot com if you want to come along.

Lunchtime Talk: Hardware Startups, Manufacturing, and the Far East: a how to (1pm Friday 17 July – Pervasive Media Studio)

This week the PM Studio welcomes back product designer, maker, manufacturing engineer and 3D printing enthusiast Richard de Lancey. He was nominated for Stuff Magazine’s Design of the Year award for his work on AlphaSphere and is currently running his third startup business; DELCO – a design and manufacture agency based in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.http://www.watershed.co.uk/pmstudio/events/fri-17072015-100pm

Below is news from the growing Bristol & South West games development scene. You find news from the hub, news from Bristol & SW developers then jobs, opportunities & events.

Bristol Games Hub is a non-profit space for games and play. We run this news letter, host events and also rent desk space at a cost price with no strings attached so you can get on and create amazing games. Contact geoff at aurochdigital.com for more information or with news items for the next newsletter and let us news for the next one by 15th Septemberplease!

SW Freelancer/Company Dev Directory If you’re looking for people to help on a project, or you are available for work – put your details in. Please only list info that you’re happy to have in the public domain: http://bit.ly/bghdirectory

At Rumpus we are currently creating The Adventurers of Bertram Fiddle, a point and click adventure game with tons of animation and dialogue. Since we are a small studio, a big focus has therefore been to reduce the workload when working with so much content. The topics covered include good workflow methodologies, automation, creating custom juicy workflows and doing other kinds of editor magic to accelerate your development.

So join us on the 28th August at 7.30pm – we’ve got a buzzer now! The entrance is off Thomas Street, just up from the junction of Thomas St/Stokes Croft, above DHS Heating.

Dev Scene News

Force Of Habit

Er, so much has happened! Earlier on in the month we released The Wonky Wagon update for Friendship Club (link), then last week we announced and released a game for OUYA called Neon Caves (link, link), and now today we’re announcing that our appetising debut Toast Time will be coming to Steam on August 27th!

We’re going to be at Insomnia 52 this weekend, and then flying over to Seattle for PAX Prime and releasing the game from there! Crazy. We’ll sadly be missing the next anti-social, so how about we throw Bristol a big games party when we’re back? Yeah? Cool. Ashley & Nick

Opposable Games

It’s Pesky gNats aplenty over at the Opposable Games side of the hub, so if you’ve got an interest in serious applications of the holiest of art forms (yes, we mean video games), then make sure you’re stalking for updates over at the Pesky gNats Twitter as there’s some really great content soon to come.

The first of our SouthWest VR events kicked off to great fanfare and glorious cupcakes complete with suitably jaw-dropped attendees. Drinks were drunk, talks were talked, wares were flaunted and hopefully some useful contacts were made by all. Luckily, nobody did any damage to themselves, gear or beer while flailing around on virtual rollercoasters, and that dreaded sim sickness didn’t rear its ugly head too much. The next event, planned to be bigger-er and better-er, will be announced through the SouthWest VR Twitter, Facebook and meetup group.

Opposable Games and SouthWest VR continued to fly the proverbial flag of virtual reality at the actual (real life) Balloon Fiesta, demonstrating just how much fun it is to be an elephant in a magic land of bouncy policemen (really). Further appearances from SouthWest VR and Opposable Games can be expected at OpenCO on 2nd October right here at the Bristol Games Hub, Bath Digital Festival on 29th October and as part of the Watershed’s Family Arts Festival on 25th October.

Auroch Digital

We’ve been asked to comment for some articles in the Guardian of late, coming off the back of our GameTheNews work:

iBeacons

We set up 100 iBeacons around Bristol – they’re in all of the major attractions (SS GB, Suspension Bridge, Bristol Museum etc). Happy to let any dev’s have access to the network to try a game related exercise. Network was featured in the Evening Post and a few other online PR avenues. Do let me know if you want any further info etc. Additionally – do you want a beacon or 2 in there/ your office. We’re building up a social networking/ discovery app for business too. Simon – simon at cpagroup.co.uk

Jobs & Opportunities

Aardman Digital

Aardman’s Digital team are on the look-out for talented, freelance developers with experience in the games and web industry. Specifically: Unity and Haxe Developers experienced in producing high-end mobile games and apps; and Drupal/ PHP developers. Please contact digital@aardman.com with your CV and examples of your work.

Playniac Needs an Artist

Events

Monthly Unity Meetup

You now the drill people. It’s meetup time again! This month’s Unity meetup will again be of a more open format (unless someone have a talk they are burning to give in which case you are more than welcome!) So come and show of your new cool ice shader, that randomly generated level creator that will bewilder players for hours or your new VR 5D flight simulator. As always you are also welcome to bring up any Unity related issues you are having and see if the wisdom of the crowd can’t help you. As always at around 10pm we will head to the local pub so any problems we have not been able to help you with at least can be temporarily forgotten. Join us the 20rd August 7.30pm at Bristol Games Hub 77 Stokes Croft BS1 3RD. Signup happens through our meetup page. Hope to see you there!.

28th August @ Bristol Games Hub – POPBOX

Calum Yuill from Picton Street Media will be demoing a user generated social video gaming platform prototype/wireframe with a view to seeking criticism and feedback from the development community. 7.30pm at the Game Hub, entry is free.

Playable Cities Conference – 10th/11th Sept

Featuring Google Creative Lab’s Tom Uglow, architect Usman Haque, artist Luke Jerram, Ogilvy’s Tara Austin and academics from the University of the West of England, this two-day international conference will explore the theme of the ‘Playable City’, asking what it might mean for citizens, urban planners, tech giants, small companies, artists and designers in imagining and making the cities of the future. On10 and 11 September, we will be bringing together a brilliant group of thinkers, makers, planners and civil disobedients to look at cities as playable places and ask the question: how do we make and unmake our future cities? The conference will feature playful interventions, networking, debate and discussion, artist commissions and an academic strand convened by the Digital Cultures Research Centre at UWE. For more information on the conference programme and speakers see; http://www.watershed.co.uk/playablecity/conference14/

VR TGO 2014 – 11th Sept.

A future gazing conference that will inspire and inform developers and businesses using and looking to use VR on its potential. The conference will be looking where the future of VR is taking the entertainment and games industry while also looking see at this cutting edge technology can do for serious applications for automotive, modelling, training, marketing etc. Attendees will have the oppotunity to go hands on with both Sony’s Project Morpheus and Oculus Rift. More info here: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/vrtgo-2014-vr-conference-tickets-11583525637

OpenCo – With Bristol Games Hub! 2nd Oct

What this space as the hub becomes part of the OpenCo national event – he’s the info so far! OpenCo is a community event spread across an entire city. Instead of going to a sterile hotel ballroom, attendees fan out to visit their selected companies’ headquarters. These “HostCO’s” are companies that are driving innovation through new business practices of open collaboration, open platforms, and an openness to new ideas and new business models. Hundreds of these companies open their doors during our festivals and share how they are trying to change the world and why.

Below is news from the growing Bristol & South West games development scene. You’ll find news from BGH first, news from Bristol & SW developers then jobs, opportunities & events.

Bristol Games Hub is a non-profit space for games and play. We run this newsletter, host events including monthly socials and rent affordable desk space on a rolling monthly contract basis so you can focus on creating amazing games. Contactdebbie at aurochdigital.com for more information or with news items for the next newsletterby 15th Augustplease!

SW Freelancer/Company Dev Directory
If you’re looking for people to help on a project, or you are available for work, add your details. Please only list info you’re happy to share in the public domain: http://bit.ly/bghdirectory

Next Games Hub Anti-Social: 31st July, 7.30pm

Join us for two great talks! This month we’ve got:

Achromatic Postmortem

Bristol Games Hub resident Lukas Roper will be talking about his recently released Windows Phone game Achromatic and the lessons he learnt during the development of the game and will discuss whether targeting a market other than iOS and Android is really worth it.

So join us on Thursday, 31st July at 7.30pm – we have a buzzer now! The entrance is off Thomas Street, just up from the junction of Jamaica St/Stokes Croft, above Dynamic Heating Services.

Dev Scene News

VoDo Far Out Bundle

Opposable Games

Opposable Games is helping to organise a VR meetup by the name of SouthWest VRon Tuesday 29th July featuring oodles of exciting guests. While the event is currently oversubscribed, joining the group will keep you notified of future events. Outside of SWVR, the team’s been working hard on Pesky gNats and a couple of as-yet unannounced projects. As ever, keep an eye on twitter and Facebook for updates as they come.

Force of Habit & Clockwork Cockoo

Force Of Habit & Clockwork Cuckoo’s collaboration project “Timmy Bibble’s Friendship Club” has an update coming on 25th July. It will feature a brand new arena – The Wonky Wagon saloon – where almost everything is destructible, and an updated Mexican Standoff mode. If you haven’t kept up to date with the progress of the game, check out the dev log, and as always if you haven’t already, please vote for it on Steam Greenlight. Much-o thanks! 🙂

Plus… updates from the Facebook group…

Jobs & Opportunities

500 More: Game Artist

500 More are looking for a game artist to contribute to our small team and help develop and produce the visual artefacts for our new game ‘Walking Safari’. The work required is to engage in the design process and produce mockups, develop a design style and produce completed artwork for screen elements (backgrounds, objects, animated characters, fonts, UI elements) for the game. The 2D game is a simple, arcade style mobile app and is being developed across the major mobile platforms using cross platform technologies. The game targets phone users only (tablet designs are not required for this project).

500 More is a startup organisation which develops mobile app games for health and wellbeing. Walking Safari is a game built around walking, and requires players to actually walk to play the game. Game characters form avatars, based on safari animals, which react to players levels of activity. The characters have to perform various tasks, arranged in levels of increasing difficulty and with occasional hazards to avoid. Players can also compete with other players or in teams against other teams. Because of the interaction between physical and virtual worlds, the game interface must be able to convey key information at a glance, players will not normally be looking at the screen during game play.

We are looking for an individual with experience of producing artwork for mobile app games and with an understanding of UI/UX. UI element design will be a significant part of the requirement so a familiarity with standard mobile UI components (scrollviews, tableviews, navigation bars, toolbars etc.) would be beneficial. You should be able to demonstrate a good eye for composition and colour .
Contact: Greg Smart – greg at 500more.com

Video Game Funding Guide

TIGA and Google have published a free guide to funding your video game. See here (PDF).

Entertainment on the move – Innovation Contest

Deadline – 29th July. IC tomorrow is offering 4 businesses up to £25k each to encourage digital innovation in the area of entertainment on the move in music, book and magazine publishing and games/interactive entertainment. More info.

Events

Monthly Unity Meetup

This month’s Unity meetup will be a slightly more open one – We don’t have a main speaker, so instead we will be opening up the Floor (a.k.a table with projector) to whoever would like to present something. This might involve showing off your latest game, showing off your utility project, showing off some fancy Unity related techniques or just plain showing off! If you have any issues you’d like to share, or questions about best practice, regardless of how much experience you have this will give us all plenty of opportunity to open up a discussion with the group. So if you have a topic you’d like to present a micro-talk on, get your powerpoint ready (3 graphs per slide minimum), if it’s a game get a less-buggy build together (see: adjective “Impossible”), or if your around just to chat, get your… vocal chords ready (recommend choir practice warmup), and after all the painstaking preparation if you have any time left at all, come along to the meet up, 23rd July 7.30pm at Bristol Games Hub.
More info: http://www.meetup.com/Bristol-Unity-Game-Developers-Meetup/events/195258072/

Playable Cities Conference

Featuring Google Creative Lab’s Tom Uglow, architect Usman Haque, artist Luke Jerram, Ogilvy’s Tara Austin and academics from the University of the West of England, this two-day international conference will explore the theme of the ‘Playable City’, asking what it might mean for citizens, urban planners, tech giants, small companies, artists and designers in imagining and making the cities of the future. On10 and 11 September, we will be bringing together a brilliant group of thinkers, makers, planners and civil disobedients to look at cities as playable places and ask the question: how do we make and unmake our future cities? The conference will feature playful interventions, networking, debate and discussion, artist commissions and an academic strand convened by the Digital Cultures Research Centre at UWE. For more information on the conference programme and speakers see; http://www.watershed.co.uk/playablecity/conference14/

June 2014

Below is news from the growing Bristol & South West games development scene. You find news from the hub, news from Bristol & SW developers then jobs, opportunities & events.

Bristol Games Hub is a non-profit space for games and play. We run this news letter, host events and also rent desk space at a cost price with no strings attached so you can get on and create amazing games. Contact debbie at aurochdigital.com for more information or with news items for the next newsletter and let us news for the next one by 15th July please!

Next Games Hub Anti-Social: 26th June, 7.30pm

Talk: The development of Woopaloo, a music based platform game

Making games is hard. Making music based games is even harder! In this talk I will cover the development of Woopaloo, a platform game that generates levels to the beats of a piece of music of your choice. To start with I will cover the two ways music can be used to drive a game mechanic namely using predefined tracks or a full on procedural approach that analyses an arbitrary piece of music to determine where significant changes are happening. One approach on how to do the later will be covered and it will be shown how it was implemented in the Unity game engine. The end of the talk will be used to discuss the design implications of music based game mechanics, and what challenges they pose in regards to how the perception of music affects the game experience. A video showcasing Woopaloo can be found at http://vimeo.com/62236437

So join us on the 27th March at 7.30pm – we’ve got a buzzer now! The entrance is off Thomas Street, just up from the junction of Thomas St/Stokes Croft, above DHS Heating. All welcomed!

Other Games Hub News:

Techie Brekkie : Gaming Trends; Console vs Mobile – Who’s Winning (and does it matter?)
Date/Time – 2nd July, 8.15-9.30am. With around one in three of all UK citizens playing games regularly, it is no surprise that from pure entertainment to health to education, gaming is a hot topic. The global games industry was already growing year on year and then exploded with the advent of smart phones and social platforms. However the ‘old guard’ of gaming, in the form of console and PC game companies, have been making a resurgence to recapture their former dominance of the industry with a series of major technology and content announcements. Who will come out on top and as the sector diversifies its offerings, is it even right to think about a single ‘games industry’ to be on top of? Join us at the home of gaming in Bristol, Bristol games Hub, to discuss where this dynamic disruptive industry is going. Introduction from Dr. Tomas Rawlings, Design & Development Director of Auroch Digital. Thanks to the Games Hub for providing a fantastic venue for this topic, and the kind sponsors Elance, who are providing breakfast! Sign-up required! http://www.meetup.com/TechSPARKbristol/events/189574222/ (Spaces are limited!)

Kotaku Visit: Hi all, I’m Leon Hurley, the news editor for Kotaku UK and I’ll be visiting the Bristol Games Hub on July the 4th to speak with people about the UK indie scene, gender and representation in games, and hopefully see any interesting or experimental projects you have to show off. I’m hoping to arrange a couple of informal round table interviews for the first two topics and then see as much as I can for the games. I can’t guarantee everything and everyone will get coverage but I’m keen to push the ‘UK’ side of my remit and this seems like a good way to meet the industry on a local level.

Marketing Breakfast – We’re planning to run a morning event to discuss the best way to market our games. Email tom at aurochdigital.com if you’re interesting in coming along. Spaces will be limited.

Freelancer/Company Directory – We’ve created an open Google doc to list details of companies and freelancers in the SW offering game development services. If you’re looking for people to help on a project, or you are available for work – put your details in. Please only list info you’re happy to have in the public domain; http://bit.ly/bghdirectory

Jobs & Opportunities

Pitch For Investment!

Following the success of the Silicon Gorge investor day in late March, SETsquared, WebStart Bristol and BathSPARK/TechSPARK have teamed up once again to organise the 2nd investor day for 2nd July (from 2pm). The event follows the same format as in March – 5-minute presentations from 15-20 startups to a room full of 30-40 investors from London and the rest of the UK. This event will take place at The Engine Shed on 2nd July, and the audience will be restricted once again to investors + those presenting on the day. The event is sponsored by Invest Bristol and Bath. The competition for presentation slots is fierce, and there are only 3 ways to get a slot:

if you are in the WebStart Bristol programme, you must talk to Mike Jackson about getting a slot;

if you are part of SETsquared Bristol or Bath you can talk to Simon Bond or Nick Sturge about getting a slot;

if you are neither of the above, you will need to go through a selection process which will include pitching to a group of judges (like a semi final) on the 25th June (from 5.30pm) at the Engine Shed. Only the best companies (and the most ‘investor ready’) will be allocated a slot for the 2nd July. Companies interested in entering this selection process need to apply via this Google form.

Deadline is 6pm Friday 20th June. Good luck!

And finally, don’t forget to visit TechSPARK.co or follow @techSPARKuk for information about Silicon Gorge and other news and events from the Bristol & Bath tech sector.

RPG Maker Dev Competition

Are you ready for the excitement of the 2014 Indie Game Development Contest? Make your dream game during the month of June for a chance to win huge cash prizes (up to $10,000), widespread acclaim, and possibly a review by one of our celebrity judges. Now is your chance to grab the spotlight and become a renowned indie developer! Deadline June 30th – http://contest.rpgmakerweb.com/

Crowdfund your games at Fundsurfer

Fundsurfer is a new Bristol based reward and donation crowdfunding platform for creative and social projects. We can help you create, manage and run your project. You only get the money if you reach your target, but we’re more relaxed and flexible than other platforms about deadlines, allowing you to extend your campaign if necessary. We’re looking for game projects of all sizes, so if you have something you want to build – and that people will want to play – then come and get started atfundsurfer.com!

Noise Festival – Call for Entries

NOISE FESTIVAL 2014 “CALL FOR ENTRIES” is now open for submissions until July 6. Emerging creative types can get their work seen by industry professionals. Curators across 14 creative categories, including Ian Livingstone (Games / New Media), Brian Eno (Music) handpick submissions to offer the best undiscovered creative talent, a unique opportunity for showcase, recognition, mentorship and job opportunities. See the full panel here! Submit via the www.NOISEfestival.com online NOISE portfolio

Sift Digital Apprentice Developers

Events

Bristol Video Games Social: Main Quest #1

Nick from Force of Habit has been amazing enough to help sort out a whole bar for a full group, so we will be upstairs in the Big Chill bar on Small Street, on Thursday 19th June. As we get into the flow of our regular meetups, we’ll gradually be able to plan these events further in advance. We’ll have our own bar, a projector with a PS3 set up for some quick, 4-player action, and a laptop for games on Windows – as well as anything else you’d like to bring, of course.http://www.meetup.com/bristolgamers/events/189061912/

24th April was last month’s Bristol Games Hub’s monthly antisocial, a night of games, drinks and pizza in association with Full Indie UK. After much games and alcohol assisted merriment, ten indies showed off their current projects and talked through some of their insights into the development process, before adjourning to the pub. The speakers and their projects are linked below.

“I achieved more in my first day at the Hub than I did in 2 years working from home.” Peter Simon, Hub Resident

Bristol Games Hub is a non-profit organisation that runs shared office space in Bristol, where game development studios, freelancers and academics share resources, skills and expertise, while they create and study games.

We are based on an open and collaborative model of participation, which means residency in the Hub is about being part of the wider gaming community.

We run game-related events including game jams and hacks, socials, training and networking, talks, presentations and unconferences.

We have a large open studio at 77 Stokes Croft, Bristol, the home of a few Banksy’s and an open air street art gallery.

Desks are priced from £90 per month all inclusive. There are options available for hot-desking from day rates to a weekly or fortnighly basis. Contact us for prices.

If you would like to talk to us about commissioning games, running an event or any game-related activity, or to rent desk space, please contact Debbie Rawlings; debbie at aurochdigital dot com